by Chase Erwin
Enwel stomped towards her brother and gave him a ferocious slap. When her hand contacted Domnall, a forceful gust of wind blew through the dead and decaying trees, and past all of us on the field. Her anger was tied in to the storm brewing around us, I realized.
Irek took a labored breath and began to groan. I looked at him briefly to watch as his skin paled and wrinkled, his hair turned ashen… he was becoming undead himself!
Irek reached under his tunic and produced a pendant. It was circular in shape and had a piece of solid amethyst carved into the visage of a flame in the center. He held it aloft and let out what sounded like an anguished cry – the language of the undead.
The three decaying bodies nearest him began to recoil at the sign of the holy symbol and retreated, one falling back into the pit.
Remi brandished her longsword and with a ferocious cry swung the blade at an approaching corpse. The blade cut easily into the addled flesh but only caused a momentary stumble.
“The head!” cried Beltrin, “try for the head!”
Remi nodded and tried again, swiping her sword at the neck of the attacking zombie. The edge of the sword caught in the spinal column. Remi’s catlike ears folded back, and she growled in annoyance. With a rough tug the sword popped out and she swung a third time. This one connected, and cleanly sliced all the way through the head, sending it – and its owner – tumbling to the floor.
I’m sure I was the only one who could hear the mumbling of the voice that once belonged to the body. “What? Where am I? What is this? Someone – someone please help me?”
Caeden noticed that the Ravens flanking our right had recovered from their fall from the trees and were getting set to attack us. Mumbling a spell under his breath, he laced his fingers together six or seven times.
“What’s all this?” shouted one of the goons.
“Vines!” shouted another. “They’re everywhere!” Caeden must have performed an entanglement spell to delay the attackers further.
I spotted one of the Ravens from our left trying to sneak undetected closer to the box containing Taryn. I whispered through those vines to tell him: “Raven coming up close to the box!”
“Thanks!” I watched as Taryn wheeled himself to face that direction. His chair lifted just millimeters off the ground as he begun to spin his wheels. Blue and purple sparks began to jump from the spokes, quickly forming arcs of electricity. With a forceful grunt Taryn spun each wheel as hard as he could. Simultaneous lightning bolts sailed from the wheels, through the gaps in the vines, and into the head of the approaching Raven, knocking him out instantly.
It was a small victory, but the war was just getting started. Not only were many more undead climbing out from the pit before us, but Enwel was still assaulting her brother with her fists.
Domnall deflected each punch easily, and suddenly struck his sister with a backhand so powerful it sent her to the ground. Stunned, she looked up angrily. I could sense her overflowing rage, just as rain began to pelt the battlefield.
“’Ere, what’s he doing?” Caeden pointed towards Domnall.
“He’s… drinking something.” Remi’s voice sounded confused.
“Drinking… Oh, Great Mother in heaven, please no,” said Beltrin. He held both arms in front of him. There was a sound of flames igniting as he shot a fireball through the gang of zombies to gain a visual on Domnall.
I couldn’t see what Beltrin was reacting to. I was too busy nervously watching the group of Ravens that had blocked the exit path. Whereas they had not immediately been concerned with our battle, they were all now facing us, watching what was going on up ahead.
“He’s on fire,” Remi breathed.
“He’s changing into a fire elemental,” Beltrin exclaimed.
Though he was at least 300 yards away, the amount of fire Domnall was apparently transforming into was enough to make us all feel the heat on the backs of our necks.
“Where’s Enwel gone?” Caeden shouted. “I’ve lost sight of her!”
“Arrrrrrrrrwhoaaaaaaa…” croaked Irek. He lifted a stiff and decayed arm beyond the tower of flame that was now Domnall.
I spun, and Taryn turned in his box. We all saw Enwel standing to the extreme left, almost back into the wood. She was waving her arms in a circular motion and screaming in incantation in a blind rage.
The raindrops began to fall torrentially, with a force that felt like needle pricks on contact with skin. The winds picked up, blowing spray in our eyes. Thunder boomed, and lighting struck more frequently.
Undead people continued to crawl from the grave, their efforts now hampered by ground that was becoming wet and spongy and difficult to grip. I was surprised by the undead figure of a woman that grabbed me from the shoulder.
I looked into her eyes and gasped when I recognized the twisted expression of pain – it was Mrs. Porterhouse, the woman who ran the hotel, the one who Dr. Kane murdered to set up his trap for me and Ricken.
In reflex, I planted a hand on her face to push her back, but my body’s defenses kicked in and threw a powerful electrical bolt into her head. It crackled and broke into pieces. Her plump frame flumped to the ground.
I stared at the body for a moment. Then her voice broke me from a trance and I looked forward. There she was, a translucent blue figure. She was wearing a blue and white checkered apron, and her graying hair was tied neatly in a bun. She reminded me of my great-grandmother.
“You must help send us forward on our journey,” she said sadly. “These brutes have kept us all from crossing over!”
The gale-force winds blowing rain every which way severely dampened the flames licking Domnall’s sides, and he was unable to use the elemental power as he intended. With a flash, he returned to his human form, and immediately drew another glass vial. It was sparkling and glowing purple.
“He’s got another elixir!” Beltrin warned. “He’s about to turn into” –
“I know what he’s about to turn into,” I shouted. I remembered exactly what happened after I drank something of that similar makeup. I counted to six in my head after Domnall guzzled the last drop. Before the stones could appear in his hands, I began firing icicles in his direction. Two of them speared each hand, preventing them from creating the rock elemental form.
Domnall growled. Enwel took the opportunity to cleave him in the shoulder with her sword. Domnall roared and flung his arm away, the kinetic energy forceful enough to send her tumbling to the ground once again.
He pulled three full vials out of his breast pocket and sheared all three tops off with a dagger he had been concealing by his ankle.
Gripping the dagger tight in his right hand, he grinned as his flesh began to grow over the handle. Soon after, more dagger blades began to sprout through both arms. He looked like a hedgehog bristling his spines – arms full of deadly knife blades.
Charging at Enwel, Domnall crossed his arms, preparing to strike out at her. A series of harp notes and flashes of light emanated from Taryn’s box of vines. His crossbow bolts slammed into Domnall’s side, making him double over in pain.
Irek groaned out like a zombie once more, pointing towards the distance, just like he had when he noticed the upturned carriage earlier.
Enwel and Domnall didn’t notice – they were too busy preparing their next strikes. Only Beltrin, Remi and I were able to see what Irek was gesturing at.
There was a rider on horseback charging towards Domnall, dressed from head to toe in red cloaks.
14. Transcendence and Absolution
The figure in red hit Domnall in the center of his back with a sabre. Domnall fell forward in surprise, giving Enwel just enough time to regain her defensive stance.
Beltrin watched this unfold and trained his eyes on the cloaked horseman as the horse reared back and was guided in a broad turn by his master.
“Good heavens,” Beltrin breathed, “it’s a Dagger of Allach!” The gold-trimmed shoulder insignia of a sharp knife confirmed his observation.
; I was not interested in the horseman or his sudden appearance, nor was I concerned with the dozens of undead bodies still lumbering for us. I saw Domnall, while wounded, as still trying to maintain a foothold on the steep hill.
Turning to Beltrin, I whispered a plan in his ear. “Are… are you sure about this?” he asked, and I nodded. Nervously, Beltrin looked to either side to ensure there was no imminent danger. “Go for it,” he said.
I closed my eyes and pictured myself as a small body of water. A bubbling sensation washed over me, and when I opened my eyes, I was looking straight up at the amazed face of the dragonkin.
“Remember,” I vocalized. It felt like I was trying to speak right into the surface of a glass of beer. My voice came out distorted and weighted. “The moment he steps into me, fire!”
“Right,” Beltrin said, trying not to appear disturbed by what he just witnessed.
Imagining myself walking across the battlefield, my gelatinous form wiggled through the dead grass, around fallen corpses, and towards the hill.
Domnall knelt against the grass, trying to shake off the blow the horseman had dealt. The blades he had magically formed across his arms were still intact. I willed myself up the hill, behind his field of vision. I took up a position just a few steps behind him.
Enwel did not appear to see my approach; she drew her shortsword and engaged Domnall in a few brief exchanges of swordplay. Each time he attacked with his rapier, his sister grunted, and a gust of wind blew her hair back over her face. It was getting harder for her to maintain control over her temper, the atmosphere, and her fighting stance.
It was now or never, I thought, and I crept up just behind the sole of Domnall’s right shoe as he stood on both legs.
As he lifted his left foot to step backward, I placed myself directly under it. I braced for impact.
He stepped into my puddle form. I yelled in pain but managed enough strength to wrap a curl of water around his ankle to ensure I was in contact with his skin.
“What the--?” Domnall exclaimed.
Beltrin aimed his hands at the puddle and fired a tremendous bolt of electricity. When it hit my liquid form, I forced all my focus into transference. The energy arced, spat and branched over the ripples of water, and directly into Domnall’s body.
He screamed in pain and fell to the ground. He began to tumble down the hill. The pain was too much for me and I began to reform. His screams changed to yelps of confusion and pain as I wrapped my arms around him and we tumbled further, further down the hill. As we rolled, I saw that Domnall had inadvertently dropped a stick or a cane, covered in jewels. The king’s scepter, perhaps? We rolled to a stop at the hill’s base, Domnall underneath me.
Domnall grinned breathlessly. “Kane says hello, Young Abel,” he hissed.
A sound exited my throat, much like a wounded bear, a howl, a growl, and a cry mixed into one guttural noise. I raised my hand, which was already crackling and forming a ball of fire.
A sudden kick to the chest from Domnall knocked the wind out of me and sent me sailing from the foot of the hill and directly into the pit of corpses still dithering and attempting to crawl out.
Dirt and grime and body parts all passed my face and lips. Gagging and spitting, I tried to make a foothold to get out of the pit, but the undead pulled me back down and formed a cage-like stance preventing me from moving any further.
Through the writing limbs I could see Raven goons charging towards Enwel. I tried to cry out a warning but the growls and moans of the undead prevented my voice from carrying. I needn’t have worried, though – right on cue, Enwel grabbed the king’s scepter from the ground, whirled around and pointed it in their direction. The attackers froze in place before their bodies turned to the color of the soil and disintegrated on the spot.
I managed to squeeze my head between several louse-infested legs to get a clear visual shot of Domnall. I planned to will all my might and fire the hardest blast of force I could at him.
But what happened surprised me. A glowing purple ball of light began to grow from my hand as I reached it out in the air towards Domnall. I managed to stick my other arm out, and the ball grew and intensified in color. What was this?
When the ball grew three times the size of my head, it began to sail from my fingertips at lightning-speed. It slammed straight into Domnall’s head.
A rumbling noise began, and almost all activity on the battleground stopped. Was it thunder? Was Enwel triggering another thunderbolt?
The rumble grew louder, accompanied by the sound of gagging. Domnall began to stagger, his eyes bulging. His face was turning green. It looked as if he was suddenly becoming ill.
He dropped his arms to the side and sank to his knees. He began to retch and vomit. Purple liquid gushed from his mouth. The blades spiking through his skin vanished.
Enwel recognized this as her last shot to deliver a final blow. She briefly closed her eyes and gripped the scepter. With a gleam of blue light, it grew silver blades – an axe.
She took three broad strides towards her brother and swung.
There was silence from every corner. Without so much as a blink of an eye, Enwel turned her back on the corpse of her brother and began to walk back towards us.
We all began to feel the hairs on our bodies prick up with an electrical energy.
“Everybody stay where you are!” warned Taryn. He pulled on his wheels and drew out the harp bows, striking the strings with urgency.
Seven bubbles formed around him, myself, Enwel, and the rest of our party. The bubbles were soundproofed; all we could do was watch as a colossal bolt of lightning struck Domnall’s body, vaporizing it in a split second. The passive electrical charge arced across the few remaining Ravens still standing closest to us, killing them instantly.
A few moments of tense silence followed, then Taryn released his spell and the bubbles popped in unison.
With Domnall now dead, there was no one left to “power” the undead. They became corpses once again, slumping to the ground, some tumbling back into the pit where I still stood.
“Ugh, help!” I cried out. “Get me out of here!”
Caeden was closest to me and reached a hand out, which I grabbed. I had to step over the piles of bodies to get out of the pit. The cracking of bones underneath my feet made me sick to my stomach, but I fought the queasiness to make my way out.
“Are you alright?” Caeden asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Is it over?” asked Remi.
“Seems that way,” said Enwel, cautiously looking out towards the exit. There were no longer Ravens standing guard there.
“Thank you so much,” said the voice of the hotel owner. I looked back over the mass grave, where she was standing. The pit was beginning to glow a beautiful yet spooky shade of blue.
One after one, the ghostly visages of the people that once occupied those bodies began to float from the pit, standing beside her. There were dozens.
“Abel, what are you staring at?” asked Beltrin.
“Can’t you see this?” I asked, pointing at the grave.
“No…”
“I can,” said Irek, as his zombified features began to return to normal, and his speech improved. “The souls are finally being allowed to cross.”
“It’s all they’ve wanted,” I said, with a strange sense of understanding. “They just want to be at peace.”
Men, women, children… Humans, fae, dragonkin, Felinials and every kind of race in between began to stand in a circle around the place their bodies had been cruelly dumped and abused.
“Thank you again for your help,” they said in unison. All their heads craned to the sky as the storm clouds began to give way to sunshine. The spirits began to lift skyward. It was beautiful yet sad to see. So many deaths, yet so many souls moving on to something peaceful.
“There’s one not leaving,” Irek mused, as the rest stared at us, unable to see what was transpiring. “I say, are you having trouble crossing?”
This spirit had long hair, a thin, straight stature, and had sad, sad eyes.
“It’s alright,” I said. “I know this one.”
Making my way around the pit, I approached Antareus.
“You can’t go… can you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I have to right my wrongs before I can be allowed to ascend,” he said. The rasp of his voice had lessened, I noticed, and the wound to his neck, which had been so large the last time I saw it, appeared to have healed slightly. “With your help, little brother, that will be a possibility.”
“What do I have to do to make that happen?” Tears welled up in my eyes; all I wanted to do was hug my brother, but I knew I could not.